In computing, a softphone is a software program for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer, rather than using dedicated hardware. Often a softphone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing as an image of a phone, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A softphone is usually used with a headset connected to the sound card of the PC, laptop, or the like, or with a USB phone.
Traditionally, softphone applications operate on a computing device in cooperation with an actual communication device (e.g., telephone). Thus, it is usually the case that the computing device has to be connected to the communication device via wires or the like. One painpoint in establishing a softphone solution is that the use of wires is required to connect the computing device to the communication device. This means that most portable computing devices (e.g., laptops) and most portable communication devices (e.g., cell phones) have not been prime candidates for softphone implementations. Rather, most softphone applications have been traditionally deployed in a fixed computer and communication device set up.
While the use of docking stations has allowed laptops to be included in the types of computing devices which leverage a softphone application, a physical docking station still has to be purchased before such a configuration is implemented. These additional information technology costs are usually optional and not supported by many small to mid-sized enterprises. Even the wire-free Bluetooth solutions, which replace traditional cables in creating a Personal Area Network (PAN), require a significant amount of manual administration. In particular, before a Bluetooth link is established between a computing device and a communication device, a user is often required to manually accept associations or worse enable Bluetooth communications on one or both devices before an association is allowed. The later case is usually the most commonly encountered since Bluetooth is known to cause interference with other Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) connections (which operate in the 2.4 GHz range). Therefore, Bluetooth connections between a computing device and communication device are usually not advised when implementing a softphone application.
The establishment of Direct Link Protocol (DLP) communication channels between WiFi enabled devices has been standardized in the 802.11x standard (in particular within 802.11n), the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. The original intended application of the DLP side-channels established in accordance with 802.11n was in high bandwidth interactions between adjacent multi-media devices used in home entertainment (e.g., DVD players, Blu-ray players, TVs, receivers, speakers, etc.).
With reference to FIG. 1, a particular problem of most softphone applications implemented with wireless connections is that an access point 108 (e.g., 802.11 router) is required to connect a computing device 116 and a communication device 112. The primary problem with this type of system 100 configuration is that inter-client communication packets (i.e., packets which are to be transmitted from the communication device 112 to the computing device 116 and vice versa) must traverse the access point 108. This consumes a significant amount of processing resources at the access point 108 in addition to consuming a significant amount of bandwidth. Since this additional burden is placed on the access point 108, communications to and from the communication network 104 may be delayed. Moreover, communications between the communication device 112 and computing device 116 are also delayed. All of this results in the user 102 experiencing a sub-optimal performance of the softphone application. Often times this causes the user 102 to blame the communication device 112 or the softphone application as being inferior, which may negatively affect the reputation of the entity which provided the communication device 112 or softphone application.
While the standards of 802.11 can be employed to establish a DLP-side channel between the computing device 116 and communication device 112 (thereby bypassing the access point 108), there are still problems associated with actually administering such a connection. In particular, the standards of 802.11 require a significant amount of user intervention and setup before such an inter-client communication channel is established. Thus, the standards set forth in 802.11 for establishing a DLP communication channel between a computing device 116 and a communication device 112 have not yet been fully developed in the area of real-time communications.